Trains, Hats & Scars
by Sulcal
Summary: People watching, bad weather, and subtle differences in memories. A moment of intrigue that starts with a train. AU. Oneshot.


Trains, Hats, & Scars

_When there is nothing else to think about,_

___think of me._

_____When there is nothing else to remember,_

___remember me._

_When there is nothing but us and our collective hearts and minds and souls,_

_we'll truly know there was something special._

It's the kind of weather no one really wants to be in, really. Cold. Wet. Autumn-but-not-yet-winter. With the clouds billowing out over the city like some kind of shroud or cloak or something, something that moves and yet doesn't because of the grey over-cast. The turning of seasons or some junk like that. Not really exciting. More of a miserable kind of thing. And it's raining. Buckets of it. Just pouring on down in big, big drops --_plop, patter, plip, splash_-- with people walking in puddles and the cars rushing it over roads and sidewalks. Miserable stuff. So it baffled Irvine Kinneas what in Adel's name he thought Selphie thought she was doing, dragging them out into it.

Oh. That's right.

People watching. She does that. Especially at the train station.

Deling has one of the largest. Nothing special. Just a bustling, plain-ol'-plain-ol' train station, with its people loading and unload, please step away from the yellow line, rushing out and cramming in kind of people of all colors, shapes, and types. Irvine would call it boring, except that it was something Selphie liked to do. Selphie would call it exciting, simply because it was. She saw something in it that no one else does.

She likes to make guessing games out of it. Supplement romanticized thoughts of all of the interesting ones.

"So there's this guy, right?" she asking, wearing a yellow skirt-jumper without a jacket and her galoshes squeak together when she twists and turns about, not even cold. Selphie is from the mountains and this is warm, compared.

Irvine thinks he's going to fucking freeze his fingers off if they weren't grasping something. One around her small hand (frail, in a way, but warm and fitting so well into his), the other in his coat pocket around the stop watch his grandfather gave him one year. A family airlume, so to speak.

"Uh-huh," he murmurs, nodding.

"And he's like, so weird, you know? I mean, I see him all the time."

"Do you, now?"

"Yup! So we're going to follow him today."

"You so sure about that, darlin'? Can't we just... I dunno... go home and watch a movie?" Irvine asks it like he means it, gesturing and really wanting nothing more than to do just that. Because sitting on the couch meant he could make all the right moves to lead to all the right things, right there, that could make Selphie giggle and sigh and stretch beneath him.

What could he say? He liked the girl.

And Selphie liked him, didn't she?

They were living together.

Selphie rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet. And she sees it, whatever she's looking for, because her mouth makes a nice little 'o', green eyes bright and wide, before she's jerking Irvine onto the train, his hat dropping in front of his face just for a second. He misses it, her finger jabbing out to point, and the next thing he knows? She's got them in a seat, all covert. Like they're spying. And they are. Irvine still can't remember how she talking him into this. Selphie knows how she did it-- by asking and smiling. It's a hobby, what could she say? And in the mean time she grabs Irvine's jacket front to turn him low and forward, right to what she wants him to see. Her hobby, her objective for the day (a Saturday, by the way, with this weather going on for the last week and a half, likely to continue), which seems fine and all. Fine, except that it does strike him as strange.

The guy doesn't look approachable. Or at least not the kind you'd want to. And you'd think he'd be the warmest bastard on the whole damned train with how down-trodden everyone else looked. But truth was? He didn't. Irvine only has a profile to judge, since the guy is half-standing, half-leaning close to the train doors just as they close. Next stop, Deling Square, good ten minutes by train, half-hour by bus. A small kind of guy. In leather. All leather. Bomber jacket with what looked like it was supposed to be a fur ruff around the edges, soaked to the bone, not even an umbrella the way Selphie carries (neon-freakin'-orange, bright enough to stop a bus), and with his arms folded over his chest like he's thinking so hard on something that it takes all his concentration and then some. Even the people around him were giving the guy some space. And in these kind of boots that you're pretty sure could stomp on someone and they'd feel it alright.

"What's with the grump?" Irvine asks, frowning just a little, a finger tipping his hat up to see better.

Selphie shrugs just a bit. "Dunno. Figured we'd find out." She liked trains more than she did people, but you couldn't follow a train as easily as you could people. A simple philosophy.

Thing is, there wasn't anything special about this guy. His kind of small, plain in the face from what Irvine can see (delicate, kind of feminine bone structure, especially in the cheeks and in the jaw), gangling, too. He could tell. But otherwise just sour-seeming. One too many lemons kind of thing.

Ten minutes of waiting.

Ten minutes of Selphie humming, kicking her legs, making light and simple conversation full of plans and ideals, while Irvine listens, engages. Wonders, like Selphie, when the weather really was going to let up.

When they get up, like everyone else, it's not a big deal. And the route the guy takes isn't that hard. A lot of people going the same direction. He walks the way a guy like him kind of shouldn't. Motions that are all hips, with one too many belts, Selphie can't help but notice, thinking it kind of silly. What does a guy, or anyone for that matter, need that _many_ for? She muses it to herself, content with her hobby, and Irvine, holding his hand the whole way as he smiles that easy, honey-and-smoke smile of his at her.

She splashed in every shallow puddle they came across, and was just as soaked despite Irvine trying to keep their wide, wide umbrella over them.

Oh well.

All the way to some fountain. Not decorative. Not anything. Just what it is, nothing else.

To stare at it.

Irvine was pretty sure that was strange.

"Man, this guy is kind of weird, you know?" Selphie asks, like she's some kind of mind-reader, like always.

Irvine is pretty sure she is.

The fountain isn't running and kind of green in it, from the rain filling it up without running. And the guy --brunet, stalky in a way, moving with a sense of grace that is simple and not unheard of, really-- reaches into his jacket pocket to toss a coin into it anyways. He's wearing leather gloves, too. And stand there some more.

Only then do either of them realize they've never seen his face, not exactly.

Not until he looks over his shoulder from where they're parked in a bench a descent, discrete ways away.

Irvine blinks-- _Hyne be damned, he knew all along. Sneaky bastard! A wild goose chase!_

Selphie 'eep's, and picks up the edge of Irvine's jacket to hide herself, like that isn't conspicuous at all. Which is _is_, but it's Selphie, and Irvine could never really hold it against her. So he just grins and lifts a hand in a wave. The guy could get away from Hyne Himself if he wanted, looked it, moved like it, but didn't (like he could simple disappear if he willed it hard enough).

The guy has those kind of eyes that are grey-more-than-blue striking. And a scar. Clean cut, but kind of jagged, bright on pale skin, and looks so tired he could drop dead. Like it's just sheer determination keeping him upright in those boots of his. They were probably steal-toe. He just stares. Flat. Disinterested. Intense.

Weathered, comes to mind: different, comes to mind: not native, comes to mind: and angerier than hell, comes to mind.

Mouth twisted in this nasty, tell you to go burn in all the hells you care to kind of scowl.

Plain, just like Irvine had thought, weird to Selphie.

They stared back.

It continued like that for a while before the guy gave a disinterested sort of shrug and left, boots audibly thudding against the concrete like the clinkclinkclink of his belts, prideful in stride. A girl, in a blue jacket lined in white, pretty and sunshine-bright next to his dark, joins him some ways down the street, the other two pinned to their seats strangely enough. Watching. The girl looked stark against the drab of Deling City, contrasting the guy's state of being, existing, with her own, with a huff that clearly told the two onlookers that she was pretty upset with her man walking in the rain like that.

Huh.

"Hey, he has a girlfriend," Selphie mused, tapping her chin with a rain-slicked finger. "She's pretty cute."

Irvine just heaved a sigh

Maybe it hadn't been a wild goose chase after all, just a strange coincidence. Maybe they'd never know. Irvine just tipped his hat down with a shake of his head and a smile.

Selphie kicked her feet some more, leaning back into the bench with her tiny frame. "Let's go ride the train to the park! I wanna go jumping in more puddles!"

"No, Sunshine, I think we better get out soaked fannies back on home."

She didn't argue.

Irvine wasn't surprised, the next several days, that Selphie never saw him again. Even if she was.

But they'd never really forget it.


End file.
